


Pour another coffee.

by Feather (lalaietha)



Series: Settle in and find your home [4]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Maria fills up her new job with people from SHIELD, hypercompetent women, ladies in the Tower
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-24
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2019-02-19 22:07:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13133193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalaietha/pseuds/Feather
Summary: In theory, she's supposed to be taking a couple days off - so "off" that she just lets herself recover. Maria even believed herself when she said that. She really meant it. It was a good idea.That just goes to show she's pretty good at lying her damn face off to herself, as well as a lot of other people. And that she never fucking learns.





	Pour another coffee.

**Author's Note:**

> Follows immediately from the previous chapter.

Maria goes to see Pepper's massage therapist, who - not surprisingly - turns out to be incredibly competent, despite looking like - 

Maria can't really think of a non-insulting thing to compare her to, so she gives up. The woman has bleached-blonde hair, the figure of a Barbie-doll that is in fact at least partly due to the wonders of silicon, and straight-up painted on makeup. Her nails are short, like you'd expect in an MT, but they're perfectly bubblegum pink in spite of that. She uses "like" just about every third word. Her eyes are huge and light blue and look like a doll's eyes. She just barely stays on the side of uncanny-valley unreal and firmly in the "oh my god, really?"

It's not that Maria's inclined to be fooled by appearances: one of SHIELD's best (before she took a stray bullet, like just happens sometimes, and bled out in a Paris alley) had looked pretty much the same. Presentation means nothing. It's just . . .really _incongruous_. In Maria's experience so far, you don't tend to find this kind of person in therapeutic body-work. 

Personal training, yes. Occupational-focused therapeutic body-work, not so much. 

On the other hand, the presentation makes the name less jarring. You can absolutely believe someone who looks like this is named "Bambi". And she is very good at what she does, Maria having had unfortunately more than enough experience than necessary to tell. 

After a few minutes of diagnostic prodding and frowning, Bambi informs Maria that for today she's going to focus on positive relaxation and short-term easing of discomfort, but that Maria should make a bunch of regular appointments with Bambi's receptionist starting next week and, quote-unquote, "expect to be sore, like, a lot". 

"I don't think you need to go to a physio and, like, rake everything straight or anything," Bambi informs Maria. "And like I don't think there's any, like, specific weaknesses, or like anything, that's like specifically reinjuring all the time. You're just, like. A fuck-load of like really angry tension and like those places are, like. Not going to be happy about, like, being straightened out. I'm gonna have to, like, _dig in_ , and it's, like, gonna hurt, and, like, be super sore afterwards." 

In other words, it's the story of her life. She used to have maintenance appointments with one of SHIELD's clinical MTs that more or less amounted to the same thing, and were way more agonizing than anyone would believe if you told them your work came with twice-monthly massage appointments. 

Maria says thanks, makes the appointments with the receptionist based on whatever said receptionist thinks is the best pattern, and goes back to the suite to try to seal at least some of the bodily relaxation in with a really, really hot bath. 

 

In theory, she's supposed to be taking a couple days off - so "off" that she just lets herself recover. Maria even believed herself when she said that. She really meant it. It was a good idea. 

That just goes to show she's pretty good at lying her damn face off to herself, as well as a lot of other people. And that she never fucking learns. 

When she finishes her bath and throws herself (dressed in a comfy set of stretch jeans and a soft long-sleeved shirt) on the couch in her suite, Maria manages about five minutes of channel flicking - which is extra pointless when you actually have the info-channel right there as well as every on-demand on the planet including ones that are probably illegal as hell - before she sighs, turns off the TV, and gives in. 

There's no fucking way she's going to be able to actually . . . _relax_ , not completely. So maybe she'll try . . .graduated, metered work instead. Yeah. Maybe that'll work this time.

Unlike every time before now. 

At least she's got a pretty good idea where she wants to start. That helps. She'll try this the potentially easy and slightly more private way first. 

That also happens to be the way that doesn't involve having to deal with Stark - yet - and she's not going to pretend that doesn't add to the appeal. Maria knows she'll have to put on her big girl panties and cope with him at some point. This is _Stark_ Industries, after all. Plus Pepper just last night _confirmed_ that Tony's got a suit, an active one, which means Iron Man is still in all meaningful ways active, it's just there hasn't been a Situation for him yet, which also just means Maria has no idea what his parameters are any more, which is actually not good - 

\- that, all of that means that there's no way she's going to be able to avoid him for long. 

But if there is one major, major downside of coming to work here, it's Tony Stark. 

Maria doesn't totally dislike the man, in _theory_. It's just in _practice_ that he makes her want to drown him in a sink and then hang the body from its ankles off a wall somewhere as a warning to others. It's all well and good to _say_ there's more to him, and she even damn well knows it, but he _acts_ just like every obnoxious asshole who ever got a stick up his ass and his nose out of joint because she neither wanted to date him nor had much time for his shit in both ROTC _and_ the Army, and Maria has yet to find a way to make that not a problem. 

Or Stark has not yet found a way not to be an asshole. 

Or both. Honestly it's probably both. 

It _might_ get better, now. God, she hopes it does. She's _not_ Fury's 2IC anymore, she's not basically Delegated Furyness, so maybe if he's not projecting his fucking daddy issues at her _on top_ of everything else he can be less of a pain. But she doesn't really want to find out yet, in case he can't. 

So instead Maria says, "JARVIS?", pitching her voice loud enough to make it clear she's talking to someone, if the AI is listening, because she'll see if she can just . . . do this the easy way first. 

There's a pause just long enough to maybe communicate a sense of someone being startled before the clear, precise, British-accented voice replies, "Can I help you, Ms Hill?" from . . . kind of everywhere. 

Well. That's something, she supposes. He - it? . . . no, _he_ , she figures, for now at least, seeing as Stark always refers to JARVIS with 'he' - is apparently willing to _respond_ to her. Answer her. 

That's probably a good sign. 

JARVIS used to be the nightmare of a very, very tightly limited group of techs at SHIELD. Sometimes he was Nick Fury's nightmare, too, but that one depended on how Nick felt about Stark that week - Stark not being the only one out of the two of them who brought unresolved issues to the table. Sometimes, Nick didn't think about it, and sometimes JARVIS kept him up at night. 

Maria has vivid memories of the very, very secure meeting wherein the woman from their own artificial intelligence section said, _No sir, you're not grasping this: there is no way that anything could do what Stark has demonstrably gotten that system to do unless the system could not only make its own value-judgements and situational assessments ending in action choices, but make them_ independantly _\- if it couldn't generate its own scenarios and comparisons, completely absent Stark's direct influence or structured dictates. I'm saying the JARVIS system is a completely independent entity, Director Fury._ It's alive _. It's a technological and mechanically based life-form._

She has vivid memories of Nick's total and complete lack of expression, and the calm and collected way he responded. 

And that had been before JARVIS took less than a handful of hours to rip through the helicarrier security and then made significant private judgement as to which bits of what to draw Tony's attention to first. The helicarrier didn't carry all of the database around, for obvious reasons, but it carried a lot of it, and Phase II had only been _one_ of the projects for Stark to get upset about. 

It had just been the most pertinent one, and the one that applied most directly, therefore reasonably the one that should be brought to Stark's attention most immediately, and, while Maria's at it, it was the one that correlated to what Steve had personally broken into the vault for and got a physical example of. Which the security system had logged and which thus JARVIS - at that point - would have been aware of. 

That's a lot of information to process. A lot of decisions for a system to make. 

Nick had _not_ been happy. 

At all. 

And yet, Maria's always been almost surprised at how little it's ever bothered her. Part of her feels like it should bother her more, but she's always found herself agreeing entirely with Phil's assessment at that meeting - which was that frankly, what difference did it make? 

Oh, there was potential _trouble_ on the horizon: the issues of AI personhood, citizenship, restrictions, creation, all that shit, all the just . . . all the _shit_ that would hit the fan once it became a general public _thing_. But Stark didn't appear to be in a rush to set that off, and that was always looming, because that point of technology was just unavoidably _going to come_. But it wasn't coming fast, and despite having jumped the entire queue Stark didn't appear eager to start it up early. 

The technicians and programmers SHIELD employed had been emphatic about not knowing of anyone, them included, who was anywhere near actual independent AI. Some of them, in retrospect, were probably lying, given the fate of Armin Zola - though on the other hand, did that system really count? It's not like they could study it now and figure out if it really did have an independent "free will" and besides, even if it did, the patterns and . . . whatever, they started out as a human, more or less. So possibly that didn't count, so they weren't technically lying. Besides, Maria's actually pretty sure that none of team set to study the JARVIS system were among those. 

And she knows they're all dead now. So it also doesn't matter. 

So all Maria was left with is what she's still got: so the JARVIS system is, as far as they can tell, a person. As far as SHIELD's concerns went - so what? JARVIS, as far as Maria or Phil could determine, and as even Nick and the techs had to admit, had even _less_ reason to have an agenda that would be any _more_ of a problem to them than Stark's was already than, say, Potts. Or Rhodes. Or some computer whiz-kid that Tony used to hack through some kind of connection, which is more or less what the alternative to JARVIS probably was. JARVIS being in that role meant _fewer_ potentially problematic agendas playing out, since JARVIS didn't have any apparent independent agendas at all. 

If anything, JARVIS' agenda seemed to pretty clearly be "keep Tony Stark from killing himself and destroying his own life completely", which admittedly had to be enough to keep anyone very busy, and as far as Maria could see the system had a sophisticated enough idea of that not to make mistakes that most _humans_ would. 

Maria'd strongly advocated that Nick speak to Natasha about the whole thing, because Nat really was the best at calling what Stark would and wouldn't do, and what it meant when he did the things he did, but Fury'd shot the idea down on the basis of keeping the intel as absolutely restricted as possible. 

And Maria can't talk to Nat _now_ because . . . of all the same reasons she can't talk to her about anything. 

So she'll do this on her own. And probably awkwardly. 

"So here's the thing," she says, deciding to think of it like she's talking to someone on vid-conference, or maybe across the room, because it's easiest. "I assume you and Stark have your own reasons for being . . . discreet about the part where you're an independent operator, not just his tricked out version of Siri." 

There is another pause, before JARVIS replies, "There is nothing about any knowledge to the contrary in the database files," in a voice that totally isn't accusing at all - is in fact so _un_ -accusing that it's really obvious that the AI is seriously put out. JARVIS adds, "I looked." 

"Yeah," Maria says, half of her mouth quirking up. She realizes she's got one arm folded under her breasts, and the other hand is picking at invisible and imaginary bits of lint on the leather couch. "There's nothing much in there about the Winter Soldier, either, even in HYDRA's secret files." She shrugs. "Every intel organization keeps some things strictly off the records, when it can, and we hadn't run into any situations where we had to open the need-to-know to where it'd need to go through the system, rather than face-to-face. So we kept it as close as we could until we needed not to. And that situation never turned up." 

"That is a valid point," JARVIS agreed. Maria shrugs again. 

"We had a project to look into you," she says, because this is her job now, and SHIELD is dead, so fuck it, "they reached their conclusions, shared them with Fury, Coulson and myself, we determined that it really wasn't an issue that would benefit from further involvement, scrubbed what little there was off the network, crushed the hardware for the project's server and then melted it down, and here we are." 

She sighs. "And I'd keep leaving it there, except for one thing," she goes on, "which is that if I'm going to do this damn job properly, _especially_ with the shit with Rogers that's getting thrown on as a happy bonus, pretending you're 'just' an automated program is going to get really cumbersome, frustrating, stupid and self-defeating, really fast. I'm happy to keep up the status quo in general wherever you want," she adds, to make that clear. "Just between you and me, period, it's fucking stupid. And a waste of time. And I have had way, way too much fucking stupid." 

"Also excellent points," JARVIS says crisply after barely a pause. "I do prefer to keep the matter quiet, at present. To put it crudely, I cannot see much value or benefit to negotiating the extremely probable cultural and social upset that will certainly arise from human reactions at this point. Only intense . . . aggravation, and inconvenience." 

"That's what we figured," Maria agrees. "And what I still figure. But just to start with, I'm assuming you have active control of all the Tower's security systems." 

"Potentially," JARVIS confirms. "Most of them are automated by default, but I can override them. I likewise have access and override authority with all Stark Industries computer systems." 

"And the Iron Man suit," Maria says, and isn't surprised that doesn't get her anywhere. 

On the other hand she thinks there might be a slight amount of genuine humour in JARVIS' polite reply of, "I am afraid any discussion on that subject will need to be between yourself and Mr Stark directly," _and_ JARVIS doesn't bother pretending it's because he _couldn't_ tell her. 

Maria shrugs, lifting her free hand palm up. "I appreciate your directness," she says, wryly. "But you see what I mean." 

"Indeed." And then there's a pause Maria thinks is basically for a thought - or at least, for communicating a thought to a human - and JARVIS adds, "And I will _certainly appreciate_ competent, reliable and effective expertise where matters of . . . company security overlap, so to speak, with matters of personal safety and security, with regards to Mr Stark and Ms Potts." 

Maria's too tired, still: she can't help actually laughing. "I bet," she says. Then she sighs and says, "So with all that said, if you have the time, or space, or however that applies - you could do me a favour and we can cut out fucking around with intermediaries. Sound reasonable?" 

It's also not surprising when JARVIS replies, "How would you like the list of SHIELD survivors delineated and prioritized?" 

 

The list is the expected mix of relief and . . . the opposite: she's still too numb to actually feel the agony at some of the names in the columns for _dead_ , _missing_ or even _catastrophically injured: survival still uncertain_ , but she can tell it's there, waiting for her to defrost. This year is going to be pretty fucking awful. 

And of course because the universe is like that sometimes, or maybe because God's an asshole - Maria's kind of up in the air over that one right now - none of the SHIELD psychologists she'd be willing to talk to are on the simple "survived" list. 

She tries not to stare too long at Amanda Czajkowksi, on the _uncertain_ list. She definitely does not open up that file to find out why. She doesn't have the cope for that. Amanda's married; Amanda has a thirteen year old; Amanda stuck in limbo whether missing or comatose or _what_ is crueller than if Insight had just killed her. Maria wonders if Natasha knows. 

Kind of hopes she doesn't. Not yet, anyway. 

The upside, and it is an upside, is that there are a baker's dozen of names on the _living_ list that might just keep Maria from losing her mind entirely, and also keep her from giving herself a stroke trying to do the job she now knows is in front of her. Several of them are even on the _located_ list, and one of them - thank fuck - is not only _located_ , but not currently under arrest, and right where Maria hoped she would be: at home, in Shaw, and only cooperating with Congress inasmuch as "this is my lawyer, he's also my cousin, let him teach you that he should be the new star of all your nightmares, talk to him" counts as "cooperating". 

Maria wonders if Eva knows the cousin. They'd probably get along. 

JARVIS helpfully includes, unasked, a category for the most pertinent as-yet-identified HYDRA plants, and if on the one hand knowing that _any_ of what was affectionately known in SHIELD as "Strike Team Paperclip" - otherwise known as Fury's admin dyad, her own admin dyad, and once-upon-a-time-Phil's admin dyad - were on the list is like a kick in the face, knowing who it was and that it's _not_ Monique means that Maria's even more sure than before that Monique's clean. 

And Monique had been at the bottom of the potential list anyway. Maria already knew there was a chance Pierce'd got _one_ plant in, and it would probably be either one of Phil's or one of Nick's. But for it to be Monique, Pierce'd have to have been planning since before Monique was _born_ , more or less, and there is such a thing as overestimating your enemy. And it can be just as dangerous as underestimating him. 

The likelihood of Pierce getting more than one, considering, is also over into that column. 

In spite of all that, it still actually takes Maria about a half an hour to work herself up to calling Monique. She makes herself a latte on the nice Nespresso machine in the suite kitchen (not her favourite but definitely better than nothing, or a Keurig, or than having to go find something elsewhere) and sits on the couch and stares at the room's cordless phone. 

She needs to get a new smart-phone: Homeland still has her old one, and may they have exactly no fun at all trying to get it open or, for that matter, dealing with the virus it'll unleash on _their_ system if they manage to crack it. Fuckers. She'd hard-reset wiped it, swapped out for a blank SIM and taken a lighter to the old one within seconds of getting on the ground anyway. Did they think she was fucking stupid? 

Probably. After all, they were. 

The number she calls is just Monique's landline: it's probably bugged but neither of them is going to say anything the government doesn't already know anyway, because both of them know to expect the landline to be tapped and how to go from there. It rings about three times and Monique's voice has a distinct breathlessness - like she'd had to run for it - when she picks it up with, "Hello?"

"It's Hill," Maria says, and Monique makes a noise somewhere between a gasp and a sigh, or maybe the sound of each of those running into each other. 

"Oh thank Jesus you're alive," is what Monique says and that's about the extent of the sentiment. "Where are you?" 

It's actually a safe question: if Maria's calling while still in custody, she can say, if it's not a secret she can say, and if any other condition applies there are verbal codes limited explicitly to her, Nick, Phil when he was alive, and their people. "I am actually on the couch in a Stark Tower guest suite," Maria says, baldly. "Although only for the last two days." 

The laugh that gets from Monique is actually kind of vindictive. "Well that's a pretty smart place to be," she agrees, then adds, "but I bet you're not gonna get out much in the next little while." 

"On the other hand anyone who wants to find me knows where I am," Maria says, and it's an agreement. "I have no idea what the official spin on this is going to be, but I figured I should let you know I wasn't dead or rotting somewhere." 

"And I am really glad you did," Monique says. "You just caught me on my way out, though. That's such an awkward thing to say, given - " 

"No, don't worry about it," Maria replies, "go do whatever, now you know how to get hold of me when you have more time." 

"I am _really_ glad to hear from you, Maria," Monique tells her, and Maria's touched by the genuine feeling, and they hang up. 

And nobody could actually claim it was reasonable to interpret that as Maria asking Monique to come to New York and specifically the Tower more or less ASAP. 

Monique's _probably_ not supposed to leave the District right now - it's the kind of time where you get stern warnings about not leaving the state, or even town - but they can all go fuck themselves. If it's over Monique's cousin's pay-grade alone Maria is absolutely sure Eva can lend some oomph and there is no way she's having any of the conversation she needs to have with Monique on the phone. Any phone. 

 

Maria pads the time it takes to drive from DC to New York with about two hours for the possibility of Monique having to drop a really persistent tail, and then accounts for the part where Monique's almost guaranteed to be on her bike and to be driving like a maniac, and figures it'd be fair to expect her around dinner time - either early, if she doesn't have to shake the tail, or late, if she does. 

Then Maria fills up the hours by making herself portobello and kale pasta for lunch, dragging herself through an hour pilates session and another hot bath, and then going through the lists JARVIS compiled for her to mark down every survivor in the prioritized categories she thinks might be useful, might be HYDRA, or both. 

There are some people she _wants_ , and even has a good chance of outbidding anyone more official to get. Ivanova, for example: she wouldn't work for any government agency if you held a gun to her head. She'd make you shoot her _and_ tell you to go fuck yourself right up to the last minute. She only got talked into working for SHIELD because it was Director Carter asking, in her last years, and she muttered about how stupid she was to fucking give in all the time. While, of course, not leaving anyone else to look after her precious choppers and quinjets. 

And SI _did_ have avionics projects Maria could use as a lure and a bribe. Ones that would be damn important, too, if things went wrong. 

So Ivanova, LeBron from Operations - Bhardwaj, if Maria could get to him before the right kind of NGO did and fuck could she use him with Pepper's plans. She marks him off with stars and a circle to get on more or less as soon as she figures she can make an appealing case. 

On the other hand, some of the people she'd like are already a lost cause - Maria swears under her breath, for example, when she sees Sharon Carter's lost no time getting in with the CIA. She's not surprised, mind you. The Company has to be going through major, major upheaval: they'd have to be stupid not to snap Carter up in a heartbeat, and it's the right time for someone with ambition and vision to be able to make a huge shove towards any given direction. Carter's got both. 

Plus, SHIELD Secret Service already had a lot of contacts within the Company, because they had to in order to get anything done - they answered directly to Nick, no other chain of command, but they worked with a lot of other agencies on a lot of other projects. Carter probably already knew who to go to, whether or not it looked like the Company would end up being where she wants to be, all that shit. 

It was probably a lost cause anyway: even setting name-legacy aside, Maria kind of suspects the whole thing's going to be an especially sore spot for Sharon Carter. She knows Brock Rumlow basically mentored the kid. That, all of that - it's got to sting. The endless _what did I miss_. Carter's young enough, and the relationship was close enough, it's probably not going to fade for a good long while. 

Rumlow's one of the odd cases, kind of like Sitwell. Maria's not exactly _shocked_ either of them turned out to be HYDRA. She can look at what HYDRA peddled, scan the authoritarian order and structure and promise of glory, all that shit, and see where it appeals. Where it's the right _kind_ of corruption to wheel them in. 

But on the other hand, no, she didn't see it coming - didn't see anything wrong with either of them until the Wrong got big enough it was all over the place, and she'll toe a hard line that _neither did anyone else_. She'd even argue with Barton over that one, not that she'd have to - one of Clint's more annoying habits is his willingness to admit upfront that sometimes the way he really dislikes someone means there's something fucked up going on, but sometimes it just means they irritate the fuck out of him. 

Brock would've been the latter. She's pretty sure even Clint would admit it. Barton doesn't usually like people that didn't like him, and Rumlow didn't like Barton because . . . well, to be honest, because Clint Barton's entire approach to _life, the universe and everything_ wasn't just polar opposite to his, it was, it is, almost an affront. The way Clint just _existed_ , especially within SHIELD, pissed Brock Rumlow the hell off. 

But there weren't exactly a _lack_ of people Clint had that problem with. Just about everyone who came up through the military spent at least some time with Barton putting their hackles up, including Maria. In fact of all the people who spent any time in the military, or any other org with a chain of command, only Phil never got that way about Barton - and when it comes to managing people, Phil Coulson is the outlier you want to exclude because he really will just serve to fuck up your numbers and you're probably never going to get another one. 

Because Clint Barton never saw a hierarchy, structure or set of rules that he didn't then go on to, not _break_ \- Stark breaks rules all the time, for example, and he's just irritating, he's not going to _upset_ someone like Rumlow the way Barton will - but just . . . not give a fuck about if it didn't suit him. 

He drove Ivanova up the wall a lot of the time. Maria had personally heard her tell him, _Agent Barton, I want you to understand something: I have the greatest respect for your skills, your knowledge and your expertise and yes, sometimes I even like you, but I swear - almost by shit I am really not supposed to swear by - that one of these days I am going to snap and_ shoot you in the fucking head, you obnoxious smart-mouthed son of a bitch. _Do you understand me?_

And because Barton was Barton, and because he did like Ivanova, he'd solemnly replied, _I want you to appreciate the depth of my respect and appreciation for you, Syusha. Because it's deep. You can tell, because I'm not correcting that to_ you mean you'd try _. Because I appreciate you. And respect you. And I did just bring you back a quinjet full of holes._

Maria's pretty sure Ivanova nearly shot him _then_. Or - granted - nearly tried to. But that's the kind of stupid smartmouth shit Barton did. 

He'd also brought her a case of vodka two months later that was apparently actually impossible to get outside of a very, very particular region in northern Russia, and had probably been obtained by means so illegal he didn't even make a report about them. Which went a long way to getting Ivanova to forgive you, even if she did at the time literally turn on her heel and stalk away to keep from killing him. 

People whose entire approach to the world is based on routine, and structure, and all that shit . . . have a hard time dealing with Barton, because Barton's allergic to most of those things, most of the time. And the worst thing is that unless he likes you he _will_ let you forget, because for the most part going along is less work than being a mouthy shit for mouthy shit's sake, and then he'll pull the rug out from under you. 

Even in a parallel universe where Rumlow did _not_ have the fucking horrible taste and moral failure of being HYDRA, he'd probably still hate the fuck out of Clint Barton. The way he obviously wanted to break Barton's neck was completely coincidental to the part where he was also apparently a fucking holdover Nazi. 

And that means even Clint Barton would not actually - probably - have the bad taste to say he "saw it coming", if by that you mean he knew something was _wrong_ with Rumlow from the start. Him or Natasha.

And as far as Maria's concerned, if Barton and Natasha both don't see a stab in the back coming, _nobody_ could've. Which helps Maria tell her own head to shut up. You can't be more paranoid than Natasha Romanoff and _function_. Even Fury wasn't _really_ as paranoid as Natasha was, because he had to work at it, which might be why it fucked him over so badly so often. For Natasha, it's as easy as breathing. She doesn't trust people: she trust what she knows about people. She trusts _herself_. 

If Natasha doesn't see betrayal as so likely she needs to do something preemptive about it, nobody will. 

But there's no way Carter will be able to let go of the _what did I miss, I should have known_ ; Maria wouldn't, in her position, even _if_ she knew intellectually that sometimes this shit happens. Partly because she's young - not that Maria can _believe_ she's actually thinking that thought, Jesus - but also because it's different when it's someone you relied on, instead of just someone you were in command of. Maria knows that. 

So there's a good chance Carter would have tapped out of having anything to do with Maria anyway, just for that pain. 

It's pretty fair. 

The lists take up most of the afternoon. Right now they're all hard-copy in sealed envelopes, delivered to her door by a slightly overawed-looking intern, along with a couple of notebooks and folders she asked for - as well as the Sailor Gear Professional pen she'd asked for. 

She'd asked for that as a kind of test: hers is now somewhere in the wreckage of the Triskelion, but damn it, she loved that pen. It had been one of the few times in her life she just went ahead and bought what she wanted, the best of what she wanted, without niggling over whether she _needed_ something that expensive or not. A replacement's not something you really expect anyone to be able to drum up in less than a couple hours, but Maria'd had the strong suspicion SI could and even maybe would, without asking. 

And she'd been right and now she has at least something like her favourite damn pen back, and it does a _bit_ of work soothing parts of her mind that are mostly just dull spikes of ache. 

Maria leaves figuring out how to integrate herself into the undoubtedly just fucking _marvellous_ tech that SI has available for later: for now, she'll just fall back on pen and paper and getting her thoughts in order and out of her head. And when she's got most of that done, she makes herself eat more - yoghurt and granola, plus another coffee - and on an afterthought leaves herself a starred note to follow up on the young woman - Stone? - from StarkSec who'd caught onto the Tower's plant before he could fuck everyone over, and see if she's out of the hospital yet. 

Then she makes herself take another bath. This one's full of aromatherapy crap. Maria's never actually believed in that, but she figures it can't hurt. 

 

Security calls, when Monique arrives; Maria tells them to send her up, and yes they should put Monique's V Star Custom in the underground parkade, no Maria's not sure for how long. She gets crisp _Yes Ms Hill_ answers, which at least doesn't bode _ill_. 

She might as well start listening with a proprietary ear as soon as possible. It always helps to go in knowing if there's already something you need to fix. 

When the door-chime sounds, Maria opens it to see Monique gathering her braids back into a leather tie, still in her coat. Maria _knows_ the thing's got to be high-rated for the bike, but it honestly just looks like a really damn stylish leather jacket, and same with the jeans Monique's wearing. It's Monique's personal superpower, and Maria would kill to know how she does it. 

She looks Maria up and down and says, "You look better than I thought you would," and Maria laughs a laugh with a ragged edge as Monique finishes with her hair and then holds her arms out. 

"Should've seen me day before yesterday," Maria says. She makes a show of returning the examination favour and then demands, "Do you _ever_ not look like you're going to a cover-shoot?" 

"Nope," Monique returns, without missing a beat. "I was not put on this earth to look less than flawless and if I ever do have a baby I will look this good from my fucking hospital bed." 

"You will," Maria agrees, sardonic, closing the door behind Monique. "And I'll look like shit warmed over, even if it's just for _your_ baby." 

"But it'll be terrifying and efficient shit warmed over, which is all that matters," Monique retorts, and if you were just listening to how they're talking, you'd think they were actually both fine, and that nothing about this moment is like being kicked in the head. No: all emotions here are completely under control, yes sir, not even a hint of a problem. 

The hug that comes after the door's closed. . . says other things. Very briefly. It's the kind Maria's had with more than one person before, and it's one hundred percent about the very primitive, lizard-brain need to be really, really sure that the other person's real, and alive - and for that matter _so are you_. It just gets worse with people you actually like, when there was a pretty good chance either of you wouldn't be. 

It lasts about ten seconds, which is kind of a long time for a hug. Before she steps back, Monique adds, "For the record I am batting minus five million out of ten on _anything_ other than coping through bitter, wry appreciation of the absurd while refusing to have feelings beyond that about anything - " and then as she steps back, "- and also I officially take back anything impatient I ever fucking said about agents not being able to sleep." 

Maria gives her another ragged laugh and leans against the wall, rubbing her forehead. Monique tilts her head and asks, "You?" 

" . . . .I could have a week off," Maria replies, because it kind of says it all. "I could actually do sweet fuck all this week. I could get my sleep under control. It wouldn't even make that much of a difference. And I called you and you're here and whatever comes out of this conversation I am going to make sure you get compensated for it, and for the gas, because you'll fucking deserve it." 

"Fantastic," Monique says, with a kind of acid brightness. "There any liquor in this place?" 

 

Maria makes them both Irish coffees, while Monique pulls the protective inserts out the hip, thigh and shin areas on her riding-jeans, kicks off her boots, and drapes her coat over a dining chair. 

"How much trouble are you going to be in for hopping across?" Maria asks, bringing the mugs over and handing one to Monique. 

"Fuck'em," Monique replies, which is honestly unusual, because Monique's usually expressed opinion is that if you have to resort to curses you're being lazy. "In fact, fuck not only _them_ , but also fuck their great-grammas, fuck the horses they rode in on _and_ the horses their great-grammas rode in on, and you can just keep going if you want. I do not give a single fucking runny shit about what they think they're doing and they can fucking talk to my closed door, I will sue their asses if they try to pull me in, and I will straight out ignore them if I end up in an interview room and stare at the wall until they fuck off." 

Which is a pretty comprehensive answer. As she sits down in the armchair Monique goes on, "I mean. Did you _see_ the absolute _bullshit_ they pulled with Romanoff?" 

"I saw them have absolutely no idea how close she was to saying 'fuck it' and murdering them all before moving on to clearing her private hitlist, and going out in a blaze of glory," Maria replies, and Monique snorts, which she also doesn't do a lot. Apparently her gramma used to give her crap about sounding like a horse. 

"Yeah or a fountain of blood. Or both." 

She shrugs. Jacket gone, Monique has on two layered tank-tops, loose and flowing over tight, both over a colour-coordinated bra - all of which strongly implies she more or less _literally_ threw on her riding gear and came down. Not that she doesn't look fine, but give her five minutes and this isn't the look Monique wears anywhere but around the house, a friend's house, or maybe the yoga studio. "I can deal with the fucking incompetents," she says. "I'd imagine some SSA is going to wander over from the FBI to try and be stern at me again when I get home and I'll give about as much of a damn as I did last time." 

Then she gives Maria a level look. "Assuming, of course, I'm even going back to DC - seeing as you wanted me to come and all that stuff about 'week off' implies you've picked up a brand new job here already, not just a really comfortable place to hold off the Feds." She raises both eyebrows, looking at Maria over the top of her mug as she holds it in both hands to take a sip. 

Maria sighs. She puts her own mug down and leans forward, leaning her elbow on her knee and running a hand through her hair. Maybe she should get a haircut. Or maybe she should leave it long so it got easier to tie back. 

"Oh _good_ ," Monique says, in the pause, "I _love it_ when I'm absolutely terrified about what you're about to say, Hill. Which I now am." 

"You should be," Maria replies, sitting back up and leaning back into the couch, folding her arms over her chest. "The assassin HYDRA sent after Fury was the Winter Soldier," she says flatly, to get started. 

Monique's lips flatten, roll in a little. And Maria takes a second to appreciate how much of a fucking relief it really is to talk to someone she doesn't have to . . . take baby-steps for. Not even because they're not smart, but because they don't know - because they haven't shared over ten years of fucking context and work and knowledge so she doesn't have to fucking _say anything else_.

Because Monique already knows what that means: what that fucking name refers to, how little proof there used to be he even existed, how close they came to having Nat actually _fucking die_ from that goddamn GSW . . . all of it. What it means that the Winter Soldier was HYDRA's. Maria doesn't have to fill in any of it. Monique already knows. 

And after a second, Monique looks up and takes a deep breath. "He actually dead?" she asks, her voice very, very even. "Fury, just in case that wasn't clear." 

Maria shakes her head. "Not," she adds wryly, "for want of trying."

Monique exhales slowly, through her nose, and she nods slowly. "Okay. He in hospital where he fucking should be then?" 

It's Maria's turn to snort. "What do you think?" she asks and Monique's arms end up folded, probably not by conscious choice. Her lips are flat again. 

"He is such a _fucking_ idiot," Monique says, because she knows Maria knows exactly what she means, too. "You know he was married once?" she demands and Maria's mouth quirks. 

"Yeah, and when she said 'counselling or divorce', he went with divorce, because if they were divorced and it looked ugly nobody'd try to use her as leverage," she confirms. Monique makes a single frustrated gesture, one that says _what the fuck do you even do with that_ , and Maria shrugs, agreeing. "He's in Europe," she says, "I knew I wasn't going to be able to talk him out of it, it's not like we ever thought he'd even have any idea how to retire anyway."

"Point," Monique acknowledges. 

Maria runs her fingers through her hair again, pulling on it a little. "Obviously, I didn't go. I don't know if he'll wise up before he keels over dead, but I'm up to . . . " 

"Trust me, it's harder to watch someone self-destruct than it is to do it," Monique replies, flat. "Nothing's harder than having self-destructed when it didn't kill you, mind, but that's after. While it's happening, if it's you, at least you can just shout _parkour!_ and throw yourself off the fucking cliff." 

She purses her lips. "You're sure about assailant ID?" It's not dubious; it's the way you ask in the wan hope that you misunderstood the universe the first time around. 

"ID confirmed," she tells Monique, "origin confirmed as HYDRA. Identity _further_ confirmed," she goes on, bracing the bottom of her feet against the coffee-table after she picks up her coffee again, "as James Barnes." 

Monique stares at her for a second. She blinks a few times. When she speaks it's a flat, _flat_ tone of pure confirmation: "James Buchanan Barnes, Sergeant, 107th Infantry, Howling Commando, serial number 32557038, KIA Switzerland 1945. That James Barnes." 

The words are _loaded_ with everything else she doesn't have to say, everything that implies, the shit it lights up, all of it and it's really, really nice, Maria thinks, to know she doesn't have to say it all out loud. Again. Or hear it even from her own mouth. So fucking nice. 

"Yeah," Maria replies, without inflection. "Memory wiped, subject to intense conditioning, some of it by means previously unknown and really goddamn effective. Rogers cracked that, apparently."

Monique raises both eyebrows, question without words, and Maria shrugs again and tries not to actually let herself build up to hysterical laughter. "Unknown. Undetermined. Possibly by just fucking existing. Who the fuck knows." 

After a couple seconds staring at her to make sure Maria's not pulling some kind of really badly timed joke, Monique's eyes close briefly and she murmurs, " _Je_ sus Christ." She takes a breath. "Current status?"

"Currently in the wind," Maria says, borrowing the acid brightness Monique was using earlier. "Totally unknown. With Rogers looking for him. On his own initiative. As his friend." 

Monique repeats, "Jesus. _Christ_." 

She sits up. Takes a big swallow of her Irish coffee. Maria waits and has some of her own, as Monique clearly runs through everything that implies and then makes the right jump ahead, asking, "Stark's gonna back him up?" 

" _Potts_ is going to back him up," Maria replies flatly. 

"Oh Jesus," Monique breathes, appropriately, closing her eyes briefly again. 

She looks upwards to the ceiling for a few minutes, obviously thinking; Maria drinks more of her coffee. 

The very silence is a _testament_ to why Monique's here and it's so fucking comforting Maria thinks maybe the booze wasn't a good idea for her, because she might just cry. Although if Monique still turns her down, she might cry anyway. In private. For a _while_. 

"Alright," Monique says finally, a sigh behind it, so Maria knows she's not going to do that. "I'm in. I mean I came here knowing that you're damn well aware that in almost all possible circumstances I'd be telling you 'no', so something had to be up if you were even bothering, and there it is, and just, Jesus Christ. So okay: I'm in, as long," she says, giving Maria a sidelong look, "as we acknowledge the really _big_ elephant in the room." 

Maria smiles a little. "Monique, when it comes to the people I really need right now if I can possibly get them? The only person I'm even more sure HYDRA never even fucking approached is Susannah. And only because you'd probably try to play them long enough to get evidence before you took your accusation to Fury - " 

"And Susannah'd just shoot them in the face right there and right then," Monique agrees. "And try to beat their heads into a bloody pulp on whatever hard surface was closest if she didn't have a gun. Fair." After a beat, she asks, "She get through okay? I've been able to find some people, but not everyone." 

"Yeah," Maria confirms, "she's with her dad up in Toronto - she was on leave when everything went to shit, remember?" 

"Right - oh that'll be fun," Monique murmurs; it's not like anyone who knows Susannah doesn't know her relationship with her father is the kind where despite both of their best efforts they end up not speaking to each other again on a regular basis. "Though I suppose right now they've got at least the fumes of a mutual external enemy, so maybe that'll help." 

"And I'm going to have a go at her . . . maybe next, maybe not, but soon," Maria says. "Anyway, I've got a preliminary list of the status of as many people as possible, I'll get it to you."

"Right," Monique acknowledges. She puts her head on one side. "So okay, what else is on the table, while we're waiting to see how exactly the new Captain America Timebomb is going to play out?" 

It's ironic, and they both know it: most of their lives she and Monique have been the kind of people who struggle with how hard it is to keep social anything from turning into talking about work. How hard it is to have any other kind of life, right up to the point where they both mostly gave up. 

Mostly, but not entirely. 

Right now, though, they're working like crazy the other way around, because neither of them wants to end up where they're guaranteed to end up, if either of them starts talking about this stuff like people instead of task-oriented robots. 

The task-oriented part being the important part: hell, Maria thinks. Robots probably have social talk too. Right now, though, fuck that. 

So to fill the space tight enough none of that shit can get in, Maria outlines Pepper's plans for the plant in Assam - to which Monique's only comment is, "At least she's not undercut by lack of ambition," in a tone so uninflected Maria chokes on her coffee a bit from laughter. 

Maria also outlines what she actually knows about Steve, Wilson, and any other players in that mess, which is way less than they need to know; Monique's got some on that, but nothing really new, and all of it in the way that says _of course we're working on keeping shit from exploding without enough intel or resources, what else are we even for?_

It's not like they have anything to work with yet. 

By then it's almost nine pm, thank fuck, and it's a plausible point for them to stop and say good night. Have another slightly too long hug, and for Monique to get out of there before they mess up each other's attempts to cope. 

Monique decides to lurk at the Tower for at least a day or two while she puts her own move to New York in play, on the basis that while overall they - she, Maria, whatever - can deal with it if the FBI tries anything stupid while she's in transit, it's just more convenient to skip the whole thing by being where the terrifying pack of lawyers already _is_ , instead of having to call them over later. 

This time Maria takes melatonin, trying for a more natural sleep. It only kind of works.


End file.
